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Fida Hussain Mastoi, a deputy inspector-general of police in Sindh stated that the police can do little even to stop the increase in honour killings, let alone prevent the custom.

The blame is often laid at the door of "tribal customs" and people try to avoid the taint of Islam in honour killings. But the Hudood Ordinances, a set of Islamic laws, condone stoning a woman to death for adultery.

That honour killings also happen among people of culturally separate Kurdish, also Turkish and Palestinian ethnic origins, gives the lie to the notion that tribal customs are to blame. Islam is to blame, and Islam alone.

We told the story of Mukhtar Mai, a woman who in June 2002 was ordered by a Muslim panchayat to be gang-raped by a group of volunteers in her Punjabi village of Meerwala Jatoi. Her "crime" had been that her 12-year old younger brother had been seen walking with a girl of a higher caste.

On Thursday, March 2 her six gang-rapists, some of whom had earlier been sentenced to death, were all released from jail on appeal. At the appeal, their relatives had threatened to kill anyone who testified against them.

Mukhtar Mai states that: "Until women are allowed to get educated ... these crimes will continue." It will mean more than education to change attitudes. 70% of Pakistan's populations live in rural communities, and as they move into cities, they bring their village customs with them.

The Islamic councils, called panchayat in Punjab, and jirga in North-West Frontier Province, are the sole source of law in Pakistan's rural communities, and the maulvis or imams are merely individuals chosen by the communities. There is no need for a qualification or training to become an imam.

In many cases, the decisions of these Muslim rural courts are staggering. In November we reported on how a Punjabi panchayat ordered that five girls (three of them pictured) should be ordered to be abducted, raped or killed if they did not submit to forced marriages arranged for them when they were small children. The "marriages" were part of a tradition known as vani in Punjab, swara in Northwest Frontier Province. Vani is a "compensation" marriage. If a man has committed a crime, a Muslim village court can order his female relatives to be given away in marriage.

Vani, which is closely linked to the custom of honour killing, became illegal at the same time as honour killing. The law was changed after a Muslim court in 2004 ordered that a three year old girl should be married off to an old man of 60.

The fact that parents in so many Muslim societies decide that they must choose the future spouse of their offspring is a root cause of the problem. In Pakistan, arranged marriages are the norm, but ultimately, these are often forced marriages. And when a person in authority can decide that his own flesh and blood is a chattel to be bartered and bargained with, this acts to strengthen the authority of the rural Islamic councils.

We have described how children have been virtually "sold". More often than not, girls are traded as commodities, the "get-out-of-jail-free" token for a criminal man to publicly expiate his guilt. Vani and swara marriages are specifically used for compensation for the crime of someone else.

When girls can be treated so cheaply, as bargaining chips, the jirgas and panchayats are above any law. And for Muslims, the rights of women and girls are nothing. When Mohammed the "prophet" bedded a nine-year old child bride, before she could decide her own fate, a dangerous precedent was set. It led to the teachings of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who said: "A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate. If he penetrates and the child is harmed then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however would not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl's sister."

PROBLEMANYA ADALAH ISLAM, DAN DIMANAPUN MASYARAKAT MEMBERIKAN KEKUASAAN KPD ISLAM, ULAMA BISA MENJATUHKAN KEPUTUSAN SEMAU MEREKA. We reported on April 29 that in Dir, in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, a Muslim jirga, attended by 4,000 people, declared that not only was honor killing permissable, but if anyone disagreed and reported cases of honor killings to the authorities, they would be killed.

Honor killings are part of a larger constellation which in Pakistan includes vani, swara, forced and arranged marriages. And beyond Pakistan, though it is regarded as a sin to commit suicide, Muslim girls are often encouraged to commit suicide when they are seen to have become "tainted". In Ramallah, "Palestinian" territory, on January 2, 2004, Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud gave her daughter Rofayda a razor blade and ordered the teenager to kill herself by slashing her wrists.

Rofayda's crime was the fact that she had been raped by her two elder brothers and had become pregnant. The child of the rape had been born and given up for adoption. When Rofayda did not obey her mother, Mrs Qaoud put a plastic bag over her daughter's head, sliced her wrists with the razor blade, and when her daughter went limp, she finished her off with a blow on her head from a stick.

And such incidents are not unique. The Italian news agency AKI and the UK Independent report that in Turkey, girls have killed or attempted to kill themselves this year in record numbers. These suicides are happening in the eastern parts of the country. In the city of Van this year, 20 young women have committed suicide, more than happened in the whole of 2005. In the Kurdish city of Batman, 10 women and girls under the age of 23 have committed suicide.

Activists state that Turkey has increased the sentencing for honour killings, to be in line with the European Union which it wishes to join. Formerly honour killings got light sentences, because they were thought to involve mitigating circumstances.

But activists are now claiming that, rather than see a man going to jail for a lengthy period for committing an honour killing, girls are being made by relatives to commit their own honour-killings, upon themselves. On 24 May, Yakin Erturk, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women, travelled to Batman to investigate this increased suicide incidence of young women and girls.

The life of a girl is virtually worthless in Islam. She may be desirable for a brief period in her life, often well under the age that would be considered moral, but her position is always going to be inferior to a man. In Islamic law, a woman's testimony in a sharia court is considered as worth half that of a man. A woman cannot divorce her husband, yet he can divorce her merely by saying "talaq" three times. A woman can only have one husband, but in sharia, he can have up to four.

And for young women in Pakistan, some of whom are promised in vani marriage before they are even born, no amount of legislation or education is going to change a thing. Islam always favours the boy children in a family, and girls are to be traded off, forced into marriage to satisfy their parents' desires and not their own.

And for the young bride, Ayesha Baloch, whose face will forever be disfigured, whose reputation will now forever be tarnished, there will be no justice. Her assailants, the husband and his brother who mutilated her, are in custody. But she knows that they will not be there for long. Ayesha said: "They are powerful people with money, and will get out on bail."

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Though the area people, union council nazim and Muzaffargarh district nazim confirmed that such an incident had taken place in Mauza Kapahi Kharwala on Friday, police said the stripping issue had been concocted by the girl’s family in a bid to neutralize an FIR registered against them.

According to reports reaching here, Momina was alone in her house when four men from her neighbour Hazoor Bakhash’s family took her to their house and tore her clothes apart.

Hearing girl’s cries, villagers gathered in the courtyard of Hazoor Bakhsh’s house but no-one dared to save the girl who stood naked. When her brothers Ghulam Nazuk and Mureed Hussain came to her rescue, they were beaten by armed men from Hazoor’s family.

The accused freed the girl after two hours when Kalu Khan, an elder of the Hazoor Bakhash tribe, told them that the “revenge was over.”

When Momina’s brothers visited Shaher Sultan police station, police pressed them to settle the matter at the village level. On their refusal police allegedly arrested them in a case lodged against them by a woman of the Hazoor Bukhash family.

SHO Qamarul Zaman told Dawn that story of Momina’s stripping by force had been concocted. He said that both the families had settled the matter and that a case lodged by Shamshad was also being withdrawn. Neverthless, he said, police were investigating the case and if the `humiliation’ of Momina was found to be true, he would not spare the guilty.

Allah Bakhsh, the father of the girl, said that police were pressing them to reconcile.

Abdul Qayyom Jatoi, Muzaffargarh district Nazim, said that police did register a case of trespassing against the accused when he visited the village on Saturday.

Jatoi said although he was the boss of district police (being the district nazim), he was not sure police would do any justice on his order. Elected from the ARD support, Jatoi said his close political companions were already facing police wrath on the direction of the Punjab chief minister.

Malik Jindwada, Beerbund union council nazim, said he had visited the village, that also fell in his electoral college, and talked to people who confirmed stripping of Momina before public.

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A YOUNG Pakistani woman has been kidnapped, raped and beaten by a gang of high-caste villagers because her uncle eloped with one of their relatives. She was chosen for punishment because she had recently gained a degree and was the pride of her low-caste family.

Ghazala Shaheen, 24, and her mother Mumtaz were abducted last month by men dressed in police uniforms from their home near Multan in southern Punjab.

According to her relatives, she had been selected as a kidnap target to maximise her family’s humiliation. She had been been the first in her family to gain a degree. This earned her a job as a local schoolteacher, but the offer was withdrawn after officials said they did not want to be associated with someone who had been raped.

Shaheen said she was determined to bring her kidnappers and rapists to justice. “My mission is to get all of them arrested and hanged, so they cannot do this to any other woman,” she said.

The prospects of a successful prosecution appear slim. Only Mirani has been arrested on kidnapping charges, and without the four essential witnesses a rape conviction is unlikely.

MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Armed men cut off the ears and nose of a Pakistani man who married one of their tribe for love after he and his family refused to hand over his wife, police said on Wednesday.

The attackers also chopped the ears off the man's brother and severed his mother's hand in the latest "honor" crime to hit Pakistan's conservative rural areas.

Such crimes, including killings, are common in areas where marriages without the consent of girls' families are still taboo under centuries-old tribal and feudal traditions.

Mohammad Iqbal's wife, Shehnaz, was not at home when about 15 armed members of her clan attacked in the central city of Multan on Tuesday, demanding she be turned over.

"The assailants, who were armed with small arms, daggers and axes, tortured Iqbal and cut off his ears and nose when he refused to produce Shenhaz," Naeem-ul-Hassan, a deputy superintendent of police, told Reuters.

"They dragged us on the floor and thrashed us before cutting our limbs," Mohammad Yasin, Iqbal's brother told Reuters from Nishtar hospital, where he was being treated along with his brother and mother.

Shehnaz married Iqbal out of choice last year and the couple left Multan along with Iqbal's family apparently for fear of reprisals from Shehnaz's relatives.

The family returned to Multan recently to celebrate the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, marked on Monday.

Police have arrested five suspects, Hassan said.

Human rights groups say about 1,000 people are killed in honor-related crimes every year in Pakistan. In some cases, women who marry against their families' will and their in-laws are disfigured as punishment.

KARACHI - A Pakistani fruit vendor shot dead his sister because she had a job and was studying for a university degree, a police official in conservative North West Frontier Province said.

Naheeda Bibi, 22, was shot three times by her brother on Sunday near her village outside Mansehra city, as she went to catch a bus to return to Rawalpindi where she studied and worked.

“The brother, Gul Shahzad, has no remorse and says she defied him and her father,” local police officer Mohammad Afzal told Reuters by telephone.

“He kept on screaming after he surrendered to the police that she met the destiny willed for her by God,” he said.

The girl’s mother has lodged a report with police accusing her husband and son of killing Naheeda in revenge for her getting a higher education and working in Rawalpindi.

The girl had returned home for the Eid holidays, as had her brother who works as a fruit vendor in Lahore.

Afzal quoted the grieving mother as saying that the victim was a pious, God-fearing girl who wanted to become a teacher.

“She was doing her BA in English and taught at a language institute and lived in a hostel in the same city where her father worked,” he said late on Monday.

Many Pakistani women are killed each year by relatives claiming they had violated a family code of honour. While feudal and tribal customs prevail in many areas of rural Pakistan, attitudes are ultra-conservative in isolated places like Mansehra.

LAHORE: A total of 578 Pakistanis including 362 women and 216 men were killed across Pakistan in the name of honour between January and December 2006, figures compiled by the Ministry of Interior reveal.

Compiled on the request of the Federal Women Division, the report places the number of honour killings in Pakistan at around 2,500 to 3,000 cases every year.

The report, however, adds that a good number of honour killing cases still go unreported or are passed off as suicides. Not more than 25 per cent honour killing cases are brought to justice, states the report while calling for tougher laws on domestic violence.

Under Pakistani penal code, honour killings are treated as murder. However, the relevant law states that the family of the victim is allowed to compromise with the killer who is usually a close relative in most of the cases. Provisions of Pakistani law also allow the next of kin of the victim to forgive the murderer in exchange for money. And most of the offenders continue to use this clause to escape punishment.

Milliyet yesterday featured a report on Istanbul's honor killing statistics in the past year. According to the report, one woman every two weeks was victim to a murder caused by traditional beliefs about a woman's place in society in Turkey's largest city.

Milliyet said, according to data from a Parliamentary commission, Istanbul ranks first in the number of crimes related to protecting family honor. The same report found that violence against women and children was on the rise.

Police in Istanbul said 18 honor killings occurred in Istanbul in 2000. In the following years until 2005, 19, 16, 17 and 24 such crimes took place while 25 women were victims of honor killings last year. According to police, two children were killed by their own parents in 2005. Milliyet said authorities believed educating the people was the only way out of violence against women and children.

Culprits of honor crimes were almost always people from eastern or southeast Turkey, the report said. A lawyer from the Istanbul Governor's Human Rights Chair told Milliyet that the victims were usually women who risked getting caught and being murdered and ran away from domestic violence, almost always taking their children with them. In Istanbul, the total number of murders, rapes and beatings of women and children was 3,670, according to police records.

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According to Zahra before her death, say sources who spoke to her before she died, her father was having an extramarital affair. If the clan had discovered this, Zahra's father and his mistress might have both been killed. A friend of Zahra's father, a young man who took a liking to the then-15-year-old, threatened to tell all unless Zahra ran away with him.

She agreed. But when the clan discovered that Zahra had left, they decided to pursue both and kill them. But the police found them first. They put the man in jail, where he stands to serve a 15-year prison sentence for the kidnap and rape of a minor, and where he is safe from the clan's wrath. They put Zahra in the shelter.

But only for nine months. During that time, Zahra's family tried three times to regain custody of her, but the association refused, saying the family could not guarantee Zahra's safety.

The family then asked one of Zahra's cousins to marry her, which according to tradition would restore honor to the family. Fawaz hardly knew Zahra and was not in on the plot to kill her. He agreed to marry her first out of chivalry, then because he fell in love with her.

Her family and the family of her soon-to-be-husband all came to the shelter to formalize her marriage, and her father signed a sworn statement guaranteeing that neither he nor anyone in the family would harm Zahra.

So Zahra, whose name means flower, moved into her new husband's home, an apartment one floor below her new in-laws in Damascus.

But one month later, her brother came to visit. On the morning of his third day with them, when Zahra's husband went to work and Zahra slept in, Fayez stabbed his sister to death.

Violence against women is coming under growing scrutiny in the Arab world. Last year, the United Nations Development Fund for Women sponsored for the first time a study on it in Syria, concluding that 1 in 4 women suffers physical abuse, usually from a male relative.

But honor killings, which happen in many Arab and Muslim countries as well as in Israel and Western Europe, are a touchy subject. Local religious and political leaders are usually reluctant to become involved in a clan's family affair, and authorities in many countries rarely report a crime as an honor killing, making gathering statistics very difficult.

Activists say that lawyers in countries with leniency laws for such killings often advise a male client accused of murder to claim it was in the name of honor to avoid the death penalty.

"There are hidden motives behind these murders. It could be for inheritance or for financial reasons or because the victim wanted to choose her husband – or she's been raped or she's a victim of incest," said Rana Husseini, a Jordan-based activist who is writing a book on honor killing.

Reforms are often slow or unusually targeted. Morocco, for example, recently gave women the right to a light sentence if they killed in a fit of fury.

"They said this way we're making our laws 'equal.' But how many women kill men? No one needs a PhD to realize that the impact will be discriminatory," said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director at Equality Now, a New York-based international human rights organization.